


Trust Yourself

by Umbralpilot



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Complicated Emotions, Gen, Michael and Saru share so much trauma, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 10:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16993101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbralpilot/pseuds/Umbralpilot
Summary: Love, Fear, Michael, and Saru.





	Trust Yourself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, dearest recipient! I'm sorry that this is on the short side, it's been a difficult round, but I'm also incredibly glad you got me into thinking about and exploring the stunning little canon detail of Lorca (and Mirror!Georgiou, initially) not setting Saru's threat sense off, and his and Michael's relationship, which is one of my favourite things in the show. I hope you enjoy this ficlet!

 

It’s only much, much later, when he’s what passes for _safe_ _and calm_ for a Kelpien, that Saru can think back and understand: Lorca was just too efficient a predator.

Michael is very concerned with his feelings of calm and safety in the days after the Qo’noS operation, after everything ends. It comes with being acting first officer – that is, acting as, rather than holding official rank, because they all rather lose track of rank for a while. That while actually does more for Saru’s peace of mind than he thinks even she understands; Kelpiens are not hierarchical by nature, and for a week or so all of _Discovery_ feels like his herd, his extended, level family. Perhaps she senses that somewhat, because she ropes him in to a series of extremely unofficial social gatherings, her and Tilly and Stamets and whoever of the bridge crew is off duty. They eat. They talk. Tilly makes them play party games. They process. And Michael checks in every few moments, speaking with her eyes, with the caution of someone to whom neither emotion nor friendship come naturally: _do you feel safe?_

“I know why you’re doing this,” he tells her at the doorway as she heads out of the social space one night. “And I wish you’d stop.”

Michael looks stricken. “Saru, I – “

“I understand that you are feeling guilty and that is making you feel responsible for my welfare. I wish you to understand that I don’t hold you responsible for what you did while undercover, but I can’t be thinking of assuaging your guilt every time I – “

Her face twists. He can see the memory in her throat, in her mouth. But she pulls her lips tightly together and then says, “that isn’t why I’m doing it.”

“Then why, Michael?”

“Because of… because of her.”

It’s remarkable how she says it and he knows. A testament to how much they share in the department of terror and trauma, perhaps, the gouges raked in both of them by the same hand. Not _because I let her in_ or _I let her go_ , which is the truth Michael has hanging between her and so many others of the _Shenzhou_ ’s original crew. Just _her_.

Saru had given up on good sleep when he first joined Starfleet. But those early nights are the first since the academy that he actually goes to sickbay for artificial help in quieting his mind at bedtime. And his mind always spirals around the same thing. That first moment in the transporter room. The first sight. The first heartbeat. The moment of recognition, of love, of realization, of fear.

He cannot explain it to Michael. Love bound together with hate or disgust is nothing like love bound with fear. And he should be used to the latter anyway. That keeps him awake more than anything, cold in his bones, staring at the bulkhead. The way that love and fear twine with each other almost by their own instinct, like they were meant to, made to do so. He closes his eyes and pictures himself face to face with Empress Georgiou again. He pictures her looking at him with hungry eyes. The danger could not be more obvious, should not have been more obvious back then. His threat ganglia flare so strongly they itch, and if he were a dumb prey animal that would be enough.

But he is sentient, thinking, feeling, and no amount of fear can make him put love away.

Inevitably, he gets out of bed and wanders the ship, stretches his legs. His sentient mind is still wired to think that there is a kind of safety in movement, and sometimes he wishes he could sleep one brain hemisphere at the time like his primitive, fortunate ancestors. He walks familiar circuits on _Discovery_ , ones he used to walk as first officer in times of war for much the same purpose. The path is threaded with the process of ordering his thoughts. He pieces his mind together corridor by corridor, turbolift by turbolift. It occurs to him that he is overriding the memories of similar walks and paths on the _Shenzhou_ in the early days. If he walks _Discovery_ enough one day he may scour the terrain of _Shenzhou_ from his mind entirely.

He stops on that thought. Freezes. He is entirely in fight or flight, which is really just flight, and the threat is entirely of and from his own mind.

A door hisses open. Michael and Tilly’s quarters. Michael.

It’s his instincts, the circuits, the ways he’d set himself to walk that would mean calm. Michael used to be along them because part of _calm_ is knowing that every threat is accounted for. He’s not changed them since. Now Michael is there, comfortable regulation pyjamas and darker bruises shot through the dark skin under her eyes. She takes one look at him and grabs him by the wrist to pull him inside. Saru goes with her. It’s better than being frozen.

Everything inside is dark and blue and soft. Tilly is on the night shift, which explains why Michael is awake, shadow-eyed and careworn. As soon as the door closes behind them, she seems to awaken to what she has done on her own instinct, and they stare at each other. His face doesn’t show the cracks her does, not to her human eyes, he thinks. But they see past that. And the scars of the matching gouges split.

“Please talk to me,” she says.

And he says, “I didn’t recognize him as a threat.”

It takes her a moment to understand. After everything, she is human. But she’s Starfleet, too, and he sees her eyes change. When she drops on the bed, he does the same next to her. They sit together in the meagre light of the window into space, and it pours out of him. “I served under Lorca for months. My instincts had not responded to him once. Not once. He was my captain. I felt _safe_ with him. How many of my kind has he enslaved – killed – _eaten?_ ”

“He fooled even Starfleet Command,” Michael says, uselessly, more as a pause to let him breathe than anything else.

“No one in Starfleet Command worked so closely with him. No one understands _fear_ like I do. I didn’t fear him, Michael. I – I loved him.”

She already knows that there is more he isn’t saying, a name he isn’t saying. He sees her expression work in the low light, remembers that in many ways she is as foreigner among all people as he is. “For humans, those two things aren’t always separate.”

“I am not human.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

Her eyes take on the edge of something broken. “Yes, Saru. I do.” And before he can deny it, “I loved her.”

There’s that itch in the back of his skull again. Danger, danger. They are peeling bleeding skin from raw flesh, from hollow bone. But the taint in the wound aches to go. Michael continues, “I know they aren’t the same person. But she’s the one who taught me how to feel. And she used that. How can I trust myself to feel, after that?”

Her throat moves, and she looks at him. “So I understand that you don’t know how to trust yourself to be brave.”

Saru looks away. His heart aches, his bones ache. He tries to remember bravery. During the war, it had come so simply, in that way of needful things. He’d been afraid, but knowing, or at least so he had thought. Now he wonders where that, too, had been manipulation. Would he have been equally brave, on the _Shenzhou_? And if not, what battles might that have tipped?

“Your threat ganglia didn’t react to her in the transporter room,” Michael says softly into his silence. “I saw.”

“I hadn’t realized you were focused enough to notice,” he says hollowly.

“I was watching for it. I thought you could tell me if…” she falters, the implication filtering through to her mind. Saru can’t blame her for it. _How can I trust myself_?

“Clearly, you were wrong.”

His tone is soft, but Michael recoils, nonetheless. He thinks that Michael will never again respond naturally to softness. Even cleaned out, wounds leave scars. “

“Some predators are… extremely sophisticated.” His voice falls as quiet as the light is low. “It is not unheard of for even my species to be fooled into thinking something is harmless. I should understand this.”

“So should I.” Michael looks down at her hands, half-clawed against themselves on the blanket. “I’m well aware know humans have preyed on our own kind for most of our history.”

“I know.” _How do you trust yourself?_ “But Kelpiens have not. We have always had too many enemies to turn on each other. I…” their eyes meet again, and despite himself, despite himself he realizes that there is something imploring in his gaze. _How can I be brave_? “For all the things that I am afraid of, I don’t know how to be afraid of myself.”

 Michael swallows again, quietly. Her voice when she speaks is hoarse.

“Now we are at war,” she murmurs, “and I am the enemy.”

Saru does not understand, but he does.

He glances down between them. Their hands are laid there, dark and pale, all twisted, all scrabbling. _You did well_ , he remembers _, she would have thought so too._ He had hoped to learn so much. This is not what he’d hoped to learn. He’d stepped up, and stood up, and brought them through to win the war. But he does not feel brave.

Michael looks at him, wide-eyed, and there is something imploring in her too. Just as clearly, he remembers her asking, _are you afraid of me_? He cannot trust his instincts. He cannot trust his fear. Perhaps he cannot trust what love will make him do.

But he reaches out, and takes her hand.

 


End file.
